to forget
by SeleneIlene
Summary: It's not always easy to forget. Or an AU where the Heat Haze doesn't exist and Hiyori's death has deeper repercussions for Hibiya.


**_to forget_**

_Summary:_ It's not always easy to forget. Or an AU where the Heat Haze doesn't exist and Hiyori's death has deeper repercussions for Hibiya.

Includes HibiMomo and slight ShinAya.

_Word Count:_ 1510

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It's not always easy to forget.

Hibiya lives out his middle school life with scornful eyes and a twisted scowl, the painful, slicing words of others carving themselves into his back. He talks as little as possible in class, ignoring the other kids, and only responds to questions asked by the teachers, who all call on him rarely.

There are rumors of the Amamiya boy.

He is strange, messed up. He's went to counseling for a year now, and as far as the students know that's where he goes every Monday and Thursday after school. Some say it's because his parents are in the process of a divorce caused by Hibiya's own mental issues, while others say it's because he's a murderer. A year ago, when that Asahina girl was hit by a bus, it happened because Hibiya pushed her in front of it. The counseling sessions are to help make Hibiya more normal, to see what makes a killer tick.

Hibiya hears the rumors, hears each and every distorted, filthy lie that comes out of his classmates' mouths. They hurt at first. He bleeds a little each time he hears one, the cuts adding up, until Hibiya is so choked with pain that he can't feel it anymore.

Hibiya is not a murderer. He hasn't killed anyone. He knows what happened. So does Hiyori. But she's dead now, isn't she?

Hibiya goes on from middle school to high school, his attacks lessening as time goes on, headaches only worsening, and his school counselor asks him the big question during his last year.

_"What do you want to be when you grow up, Amamiya?"_

He's never really thought about it before. Hibiya has done well in school, never the brightest, but never the dimmest, passing his classes with dull, gray colors and essays filled with fake, meaningless words he does not believe in.

What does he want to be?

No. Why should he have the right to choose what he wants to be? Hibiya is dull and worthless, the crumpled paper at the bottom of the wastebasket. There's nothing special about him.

Hiyori, he thinks, was a special person who will never get the chance to choose what she wants to be. She can't grow up, can't live her life, or smile, or laugh, or hit him, or call him stupid ever again._ Hiyori is a mangled body in Hibiya's arms, bleeding out all over him. The last ounces of her life spill out into the street, staining the pavement dark crimson, and coat Hibiya's clothes, filling his nose with the sharp scent of blood, and oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God, why. Why? W h y._

Hibiya has a panic attack in the school counselor's office, and it's all over the school by the time he comes back a few days later. He'd thought he was safe from the attacks, after around two years of not having one, but it seems like they will always be there, waiting to pop out at the slightest jolt in his memory.

It's not always easy to forget.

Instead of being called into the counselor's office this time, Hibiya goes there of his own volition and says, "I want to help people who are dying."

The counselor slaps medical brochures into his hands and tells him he needs to get studying then.

His attacks will be an issue, his psychiatrist warns, and the blood he sees while performing surgery and the like are only going to make them more frequent. He wants to save people, though, save people because he couldn't save Hiyori. Hibiya pleads with her, he cries and begs for something, anything at all that will make it all go away.

With his mother's consent, he is given pills, pills that numb him to the world in ways he's never felt before. He knew there would be side effects, as the pills are still currently going through the health department tests and being okayed by higher ups.

Hibiya never expected everything to be so gray and lifeless. But the pills make his memories fade, pushing them to the deepest, darkest recesses of Hibiya's mind, and that's all that really matters.

Hibiya becomes a surgeon, by some sort of miracle, and he specializes in cardiology.

He doesn't connect well with any of his patients, but he does care for them as much as someone like him can. They range from elderly men and women with dried, rickety hearts that skip beats to children whose hearts are deformed and rarely beating at all, supplied with tubes and rubber to pump the blood in place of healthy tissue.

It's when a familiar, retired idol comes in with a fragile heart that things change for Hibiya.

Momo is bright and warm like the sun, quirky and clumsy. She trips over her bedsheets and spills her water all over the floor, only to slip on that while trying to clean it up. Hibiya is surprised she hasn't died of a heart attack yet.

He doesn't get along with her much at first, as the woman doesn't find his sarcasm quite as funny as his older patients usually do, and her face haunts his memories as he remembers how much Hiyori liked a certain 'Momo Kisaragi'. When Momo mentions her fear of water in passing one day, though, and the reason behind it, Hibiya can feel something inside of him start to beat again, and the world is flooded with light.

Momo's heart condition stems from an accident at the beach when she was little, when she was swept under a wave and nearly drowned. Luckily, people along the shoreline had seen it happen and had saved her, dragging her to the sand and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They hadn't been able to save her father, though, and Hibiya sees Momo stiffen as she mentions him.

She feels the same way as him, maybe not to the same degree, but she knows what it is like to be safe while a loved one is not.

Hibiya tells her about Hiyori, and even laughs at one point when he talks of the girl's obsession and admiration of Momo. They bond and their tone of voice changes around the other, softening with gentle words and lingering touches.

Hibiya falls in love, and Momo, fragile Momo, does as well.

They get married after a year of dating. Momo's condition has worsened by then, and so they figure it's best to be husband and wife then not at all if the unspoken, dreaded time ever comes for her.

Hibiya quits his job as a surgeon, just as he quits his pills which had been banned long ago, and the two are happy. But Momo becomes pregnant, and at the cost of her life, despite Hibiya's protests, she has the child.

It's a girl, with black hair from her mother's side and her father's dark brown eyes. Hibiya dresses her in wild, orange dresses and pink hoodies, and she is a clumsy, scowling thing, as much Momo's as she is Hibiya's.

Hibiya takes her to her uncle Shintaro's house with her cousins when he has work at the hospital, desk work that includes checking graphs and ultrasounds, scans and heart rate charts, the sort of easy stuff he's happy with.

One day, Hibiya picks his daughter up, and her black hair is done in low pigtails. Shintaro's wife Ayano laughs as the little girl runs to her father, squealing when he picks her up.

"She's such a cutie," Ayano says, eyes and smile bright yet weary. "It's such a nice change to have a girl around the house."

Her seven-year-old son makes an offended noise from his place in front of the TV, but he never looks up from his video game, and the baby boy in Ayano's arms lets out a wail.

"Thank you for watching her," Hibiya tells the woman, and he lets his fingers graze over the tips of his daughter's pigtails unconsciously.

They sit and chat over tea that Ayano fixes. He goes through the regular pleasantries with her, asking what his daughter did and how was Ayano's day, and oh, was Shintaro's work still going well?.

When Hibiya starts to leave, his daughter clutching his fist in her own tiny one, Ayano tells him she has a few hand-me-downs from her aunt that she thinks would look great on the little girl, and when she brings out a familiar pink dress, Hibiya has to stop himself from retching as the blood fills his nostrils.

"Thank you," he mutters, taking the dress, Ayano's face clicking into place among his memories, standing beside a tombstone as a coffin is lowered into the ground. "I'm sure she'll look great in it."

His daughter is forbidden from riding buses, and Hibiya is strict when it comes to walking across the road, making sure that she will know to only cross at crosswalks, and even then she must look both ways no matter what the light says.

It's not always easy to forget.

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**A/N:** this was mostly just a vent so i'm sorry for crappy quality and what not.


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